Grade my essay please!

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

<p>Does being ethical make it hard to be successful?</p>

<p>As Ralph Waldo Emerson said with the quote, “Good men must not obey the laws too well”, there are certain actions, which may be deemed unethical by society, that can bring about success. C. Auguste Dupin, the great French detective, has shown us this on many occasions, as have John Brown, an abolitionist, and the GOD clothing brand of Hong Kong.</p>

<p>C. Auguste Dupin, the main protagonist in three short stories by the American novelist Edgar Allan Poe, was a French detective who used intuition and deductive reasoning to solve crimes that the police couldn’t, often through the use of immoral actions. In the short story “The Purloined Letter” (1844), he had to find an incriminating letter that a local minister had stolen. He deduced that the minister had hidden the letter in plain sight and he distracted the minister when he arrived at his house and stole what he suspected was the letter before replacing it with a fake copy. In the end he successfully solved the case that the police was unable to despite stealing.</p>

<p>John Brown, too, shows us that being ‘unethical’ does not restrict us from being successful. He, an abolitionist, led 21 men in an attack on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, on October 16, 1859, with the goal of beginning an uprising against slaves and ending slavery. Furthermore, he financed anti-slavery activities and raised a black youth with his wife. His actions caused more and more men to fight against slavery and inevitably slavery was abolished. What he did may have been deemed unethical at that time, but inevitably, despite that fact that he had been executed, slavery was abolished and it stemmed from his actions.</p>

<p>GOD, a local clothing brand in Hong Kong, was the centre of a lot of hype in 2008 due to the new t-shirts it created which had the logo “14K” on it, the name of a local triad gang. It was subject to criminal prosecutions despite having no relationship to the triads, and was forced to pay a huge fine. But despite that fact, from that point onwards, the media attention it had attained due to its immoral action helped it become a huge success. Now its one of the largest local clothing stores in Hong Kong.</p>

<p>Dupin, Brown and GOD go to show that you do not have to obey ethics and morality in order to be successful if your reasoning is indeed justified and sound.</p>

2

<p>this essay is a 9 at most. I think 8 is reasonable.</p>

3

<p>Just out of curiosity, where did you get this prompt from? BB?</p>

4

<p>From examdude.com
Ren, why do you say it is a 9 at most? What is wrong with it and what can I do to improve?</p>

5

<p>Anyone? Please, need help before the June SAT in a weeks time.</p>

6

<p>You didn’t answer the question posed by the prompt. You merely said that being unethical can make one successful; you did not say whether being ethical does or does not make it hard to be successful.</p>

7

<p>Wow. You are actually right. Thank you so much transfers. I guess I could just say that even though John Brown was successful it took a lot of effort - he lost his life - same with GOD - legal proceedings. The third example to be Gandhi.</p>

<p>If I had answered the question, would those examples be sufficient to pull me up to 10 or so?</p>

8

<p>It’s funny. My sister got this exact prompt on March 2009 SAT test. She wrote about Yellow Journalists, something about slavery, and John Rockefeller. She explained that being ethical makes it hard to be successful. She scored an 11.</p>

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<p>What do you think about my essay, kobudnik? By the way, thanks for the examples. :D</p>

10

<p>I’d say it’s fine to just show how being unethical lead to success for these people. That’s what my sister did. As far as your essay, I’d give it a 9 or 10. I’d try to expand more on these examples and give them depth, even if that means cutting down one example to make room for the others.</p>

11

<p>But I thought the golden rule to getting a 10+ essay was to give 3 examples. The essay is about 400 words, it would be hard to write more than that in the 25 minute time frame though, wouldn’t it?</p>

12

<p>There is no golden rule. The best rule I can give you is this: Get unique and specific examples that will impress the reader with your historical knowledge, and write a ****load about it. On my March SAT, I scored a 10 by doing that (I thought I should’ve scored higher) and I only used two examples. On the other SAT that my sister took, she got a 12 with only one example. So like I said, quality is better than quantity. The best thing to do is fill up the 2 pages but really delve into the examples.</p>

<p>For the 11 essay my sister scored, she expanded very well on two of the topics, but at the end she just kind of threw in the Rockefeller example for 3 sentences. Perhaps if she hadn’t included it, and rather expanded on her other examples, she would’ve gotten the 12.</p>

13

<p>Alright, thanks a lot. The thing is I don’t study history and we do not do a lot of books in my English class so I barely have any good examples. I just studied these yesterday while searching for examples. Could you possibly think of anything that may be good for an SAT essay? Just give me a word and I will do all the research. :D</p>

14

<p>^ Did you study the examples after reading the prompt then proceed to write the essay? If so, I suggest not doing that again. The hardest part of the essay is to think of 1-3 relevant examples to the prompt given under the pressure of a 25 minute time limit, and to practice essays without simulating such pressure will only result in failure.</p>

15

<p>I studied those examples yesterday and memorized as much as I could on those 3 examples. Then when I wrote the essay, must have been about 8 hours after memorizing the examples, I just wrote as much as I remembered.</p>

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<p>You used 8 hours to research 3 examples?</p>

17

<p>No. I researched 3 examples (this was in the morning). Did some stuff during the day, and wrote the essay at night without any notes, just based on memory.</p>